Tuesday, 9 June 2009

First Day

I had my first day of prac today and it went fine. I basically just observed the first lesson, then for the next two lessons I kind of wandered the room and helped the students? I think? I had no idea what I was doing, and it reminded me that I'm really stupid.

But anyway, he's asked me to create two five minute activities for the year 10 class to do during their lesson. Have I mentioned before that they have 75 minute periods? 75 minutes. Jesus, I would have gone nuts if my lessons were that long. But anyway, 75 minutes of trying to keep a group of students on task. And I only have to think of 10 minutes of stuff. Easy right?

Of course not! We've already established how stupid I am.

Basically their assessment task (which still hasn't been finalised) is to write a speech (but not deliver it) about one of the themes of Much Ado About Nothing. So they're learning about speeches and techniques. They haven't read MAAN, but they watched a modern adaptation. I just watched it tonight. It's got a completely different ending to the play. And one of the themes the teacher has chosen is revenge, but it's not really a theme of the play... I'll talk to him about it tomorrow.

But anyway, so my first 5 min activity is on MLK's "I have a dream" speech. The teacher told me to make the activity about dreams or hopes or something. I really didn't understand what he wanted from me, and I don't really see the point of making an activity about dreams or hopes when it isn't relevant to the topic? I'm so clueless. So after an hour of trawling through Google I got the idea that I could have the activity be the kids writing a short paragraph starting with "I have a dream that one day..." and then putting their own dreams in there, but making sure they include some of the techniques of rhetoric/speech. Ja? Is that OK? I just don't think it's really all that doable in 5 minutes, especially with this class... they seemed a bit slow to start when we had them today.

But then the second activity he wants me to do it on revenge, and was saying maybe show an example of revenge going wrong and how revenge isn't a good option, but I have no idea what I would use for that.

Meanwhile, I'm so tired. I came home and napped. I barely slept last night because it was so bloody freezing. And it was freezing in the classroom today. Yuck. I'm going to layer up tomorrow.